


Malfoys and Lovegoods

by Oakwyrm



Series: My City Now [5]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crisis of Faith, Family Secrets, Gen, Illegitimacy, Werewolf Draco Malfoy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-17
Updated: 2020-03-17
Packaged: 2021-02-28 17:07:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23190625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oakwyrm/pseuds/Oakwyrm
Summary: She had cornered him once, when they were both still young before the world was at war. She was bright and lively and had seen no reason why he should not know what she did, so she'd told him. He did not believe her.She was in his basement. They were both still young. Still children. Too young to be caught up in this war. He was starting to believe her.
Relationships: Luna Lovegood & Draco Malfoy
Series: My City Now [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1644718
Comments: 3
Kudos: 69





	Malfoys and Lovegoods

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little thing to set up that This Be A Thing in this universe.

“ _You’re my cousin.”_

The voice of Luna Lovegood at age twelve rang through his head, sharp and clear for what must be the thousandth time. His lip curled in a reflexive sneer as he wrenched his focus back onto be book in his hands.

Magic theory, however, flat out refused to interest him as his thoughts veered wildly sideways to land back on Lovegood. It was annoying, though not surprising. She was in his home. He caught her scent on every full moon when he went down to the basement to curl up and wait for the night to pass. He could smell her through the wall and he wondered, sometimes, whether she knew he was there.

“ _What?”_

His own voice, in the high and awkward note of a thirteen-year-old, came back to him, a cold sneer behind the cracking vocals.

“ _We’re cousins. Abraxas Malfoy was my grandfather.”_

He had told her it was impossible then. He told himself as much now. He had avoided her for years, changed his routines and on one very memorable and embarrassing occasion ducked into an abandoned classroom just to avoid passing her in the hallway. He had told himself that if his family had such a secret surely he would have been told of it.

A nagging doubt gnawed at his chest, now. He didn’t recognize his own home or his father or himself. Was the thought that his grandfather had fathered a bastard really so far-fetched when set against everything else? Draco stared out the window, down into the garden where the Dark Lord’s pet was sunning herself on a rock.

He snapped his book shut and sprang to his feet. Before he could think twice about it his path was set, towards the library. He passed through row after row of old books until he came to the very back wall. There he took out his wand and tapped out the required pattern. The bookcase in front of him sank into the floor, opening the doorway to the records room.

There wouldn’t be anything to find. He’d prove her a liar. At least this much of his family name he would preserve. He would look and there would be _nothing_.

His breath shook as he ran down the line of dates on the shelves, ledgers from long before Draco’s great-grandfather’s time sat dusty but pristine on the shelves. He pulled out a record of births and deaths first, flipping to the most current page where he found himself, and his father, and a Landon Blackburn, a distant cousin whose mother had been a Malfoy before her marriage. There was no Lovegood.

But there wouldn’t be. No one was stupid enough to keep official records for a bastard child. He hesitated. He could just let the matter lie there. Pretend like this proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was right and she was wrong. He didn’t have to dig further.

His hand reached for an old ledger anyway. House expenditures, 1950 – 1959. It was a massive tome and sent up a dust cloud which made his eyes water and his throat itch as he let it fall onto the small desk in front of him. Only when he opened it did he realise he didn’t actually know how old Xenophilius Lovegood was, only that he had to have been born 1964 the very latest, most likely earlier.

With a sigh, he summoned the expenditures for 1960 – 1969 and flipped it open to 1965. He got all the way to the end of January before his eyes fixed on something decidedly odd.

> _31-01-65 – Arts Patronage – E. Lovegood – 600 Galleons_

His heart dropped as he flipped to February.

> _28-02-65 – Arts Patronage – E. Lovegood – 600 Galleons_

March.

> _31-03-65 – Arts Patronage – E. Lovegood – 600 Galleons._

He tried to calm his racing heart. Plenty of Malfoy patriarchs had funded some or other artist over the years, occasionally more than one at a time. It leant an additional aura of sophistication. But Draco had been brought up learning how to decode these ledgers, to know the true meaning behind every line, and 600 Galleons was _far_ too large of a sum. That was enough to exceed the monthly income of a good number of people who considered themselves quite comfortable in their lives.

“Fuck,” he said, with feeling, not caring how crass it sounded or about the scolding he would have received had anyone been there to hear him. He banished the ledger back to its spot on the shelf and opened the one from the 50s, working through the years backwards.

Every month he found the same line until-

> _11-05-55 – Late Cancellation Fee – E. Lovegood – 4500 Galleons_

Pricey, but not ridiculous depending on the size and complexity of the piece and how much work had already gone into it. He flipped back further still.

> _17-09-54 – Painting Commission, family in summer sitting room – E. Lovegood – 2100 Galleons_

Draco let his head drop into his hands, a string of curses colourful enough to make Weasley blush falling from his lips. 6600 Galleons within a little more than eight months, after which point the monthly payments started.

It would all look harmless enough to the untrained eye. An artist who got a commission for a large, complex piece, accounting for the original price and then worked on it for months before receiving an abrupt cancellation. For which they had obviously been fairly compensated, and despite the cancellation had made a good and lasting impression on the head of the family.

He shut the ledger and banished it back to its shelf. He felt jittery, a nervous energy building up in his body. He needed to fly. Or to run. Do _something_ other than stay within the walls of the manor.

Instead, he got up and headed directly for the genealogy section of the library. His eyes scanned the books before he landed on _Pure-blood Families of Wizarding Britain: A Look Outside of the Sacred Twenty-Eight_.

He pulled it off the shelf and flipped through it. Most of it was useless waffle, arguments for why the Weasleys should be excluded from the list as the Potters had been, and criticism of the Ollivanders being included despite Garrick Ollivander’s mother famously being of non-wizard parentage. Similarly it contained entreaties from the Princes, Crabbes, and Goyles who all found their exclusion from the list to be quite offensive.

He was just about to give up on it when a passage caught his eye.

> _On the subject of questionable parentage, one need only turn one’s eyes to the Lovegoods of Devon._
> 
> _An odd family already their neighbours could previously soothe themselves with the knowledge that at least they were pure-blood. Indeed the Lovegoods have a long, well-established history of turning out somewhat eccentric yet still respectable witches and wizards with a predilection for Ravenclaw house. This, however, can no longer be said of the Devonshire branch in particular as Xenophilius Lovegood, recent Hogwarts graduate and son of famed painter Eumilia Lovegood, continues to claim ignorance as to the identity of his father-_

Draco slammed the book shut.

Before he was fully conscious of what he was doing his feet were carrying him out of the library, the book clutched tightly in one hand. Not towards his father’s study, or even his mother’s favoured sitting room. He was halfway down the basement steps before he’d even realised where he was going.

He grit his teeth and pressed on.

“Lovegood!” he hissed through the door.

“Draco?” her airy voice, slightly rougher than he was used to, answered him. “What are you doing down here? It’s not the full moon already, is it?”

All of Draco’s coherent thoughts scattered in an instant as a blind panic gripped his heart.

“What are you talking about?” he snapped, too caught up in the sound of his blood rushing in his ears to pull up the usual veil of contempt.

“I notice things,” she said. A sliding noise against the door suggested she had sat down with her back to it. He followed her example. “You come down here pretty often. It didn’t take much to figure out it was about once a month.”

“And you somehow got _werewolf_ from that?” Draco scoffed. “I thought Ravenclaws were supposed to be smart.”

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” she said. “But I know I’m right and I won’t breathe a word of it to anyone else. Not even you deserve that.”

Draco swallowed hard against a wave of nausea. “This is not what I came down here to talk about.”

“Yes, I was wondering.” She sounded tired. It shouldn’t have been surprising, given her situation and yet…

“You’re my cousin.” His tone was flat, hurried to distract himself from how his skin began to crawl the longer he contemplated what was happening in his house.

“I thought you said no self-respecting Malfoy would ever come within a mile of my family.” Had he imagined the hurt in her voice at that?

His hands tightened around the book. “Apparently I was wrong,” he said through his teeth.

There was silence on the other side of the door for a while.

Draco was almost ready to get up and leave when; “Is it really so terrible to be related to me?”

“Yes! Have you _met_ your father? The man’s a complete lunatic!”

“Have you met yours?” her voice was still even, but it was icy in a way that Draco had not thought her capable of.

He abruptly shut his mouth.

“Oh,” she said after a few endless seconds had passed in silence. She sounded genuinely surprised. “I was sort of expecting you to argue with that.”

“I don’t know what to think anymore,” he said quietly, so quietly he was almost sure she hadn’t heard him.

“Then start by taking a look at everything your family taught you and if you really still believe it.”

He didn’t reply. He was halfway up the stairs before she’d even finished speaking.

**Author's Note:**

> Luna and Draco are going to have the most baffling relationship once Draco drags himself out of being a terrible excuse for a human being.
> 
> Also:  
> Narcissa, when she found out about Xenophilius and realised the woman she spent seven years rooming with who hexed her in their fifth year, is technically her sister-in-law: ThIs Is FiNe


End file.
